translation - notes inégales refers to the swung, jazz-like, rhythmic inflections in French baroque music.
notes inégales was created by Peter Wiegold and David Purser, devoted equally (or unequally) to improvisation as well as written music, and to devising new work alongside composers/other artists as well as playing contemporary repertoire.
players
Martin Butler piano
Christian Forshaw saxophones
Torbjorn Hultmark trumpet
Melinda Maxwell oboe/ cor anglais
Peter Wiegold keyboard/director
Martin Butler
Martin Butler was born in Romsey, England, in 1960 and studied at the University of Manchester and the Royal Northern College of Music. In 1983 he received a Fulbright Award for study at Princeton University, USA, where he was resident until 1987, and in 1985 he received the Master of Fine Arts. Butler’s works are widely performed and broadcast both in the UK and abroad. He has received commissions from, amongst others, the BBC (O Rio was first performed at the 1991 Proms), the London Sinfonietta (Concertino and Jazz Machines, of which the latter was played at the 1995 Venice Biennale), and the Cheltenham and Canterbury festivals. In June 1994 Mecklenburgh Opera premièred the operatic adventure story Craig's Progress, with a libretto by Stephen Pruslin, which was adapted for radio broadcast by BBC Radio 3. Butler was featured composer at the 1995 Vale of Glamorgan Festival where his Clarinet Quintet was premièred, and of the Park Lane Group’s January 2002 concert series.
Recent works by Butler include the Concertino for Piano and Chamber Orchestra, written for Murray McLachlan and the Chetham’s Symphony Orchestra in 2002, and Sequenza Notturna, a piano quartet composed for the Schubert Ensemble which was premièred in 2003, and has subsequently been toured around the UK, USA, Canada, and Romania. The Schubert Ensemble marked the start of a 'Composer Portrait Series' with a programme of works by Martin Butler at the Purcell Room in June 2005.
Butler will be the Brighton Philharmonic Orchestra’s first ever ‘Composer in Residence’ for two seasons, as of Autumn 2006. This position includes several performances of his orchestral works and a commission for a brand new work to be premiered in spring 2007. Recent premieres for 2006 have included a work for string quartet and viola at the Brighton Festival and a substantial new work for piano given by William Howard at the Norfolk and Norwich Festival.
Christian Forshaw
Christian Forshaw graduated from the Guildhall School of Music & Drama in 1995 with distinction. He then began working with some of the world’s finest ensembles including the London Sinfonietta, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and the Philharmonia Orchestra.
He has toured extensively with smaller ensembles including the Michael Nyman Band, the Endymion Ensemble, Icebreaker and the Composers Ensemble.
Christian has also made solo appearances with the Scottish Ensemble giving several critically acclaimed performances of Richard Rodney Bennett’s Concerto for Alto Saxophone and Strings, and with the London Sinfonietta in 2002 performing Pedro Rebello’s Aquas Liberas at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. In March 2007 he gave the first performance of Gary Carpenter's Sonatinas for alto saxophone and chamber orchestra with Ensemble 10/10
Christian's debut album Sanctuary (QTZ2009) combines saxophone, voices, church organ and percussion in arrangements of sacred melodies as well as original composition. Sanctuary reached No.1 in both the Amazon.co.uk Classical Chart and New Zealand’s Concert FM charts, and has received airplay on BBC Radio 2, BBC Radio 3 ,BBC 1 TV and Classic FM.
In 2006 Christian was offered a four album deal with SonyBMG which he turned down in favour of setting up his own label, IntegraRecordsUK. This was to avoid having to consider market forces when creating further albums; something he felt would kill the creative process. His second album, Renouncement was released on Integra on 2nd April 2007 (www.integrarecords.com).
Since 2002 Christian has been Professor of Saxophone at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama where he leads an enthusiastic group of young professionals.
Torbjorn Hultmark
Torbjorn Hultmark was born in Sweden in 1957 and came to live in England in 1985. He currently works as a musician, teacher and composer. He has dual Swedish and British citizenship and lives with his family in a rural village in Berkshire.
Torbjorn studied trumpet, conducting and composition at the Gothenburg Conservatoire of Music and at National Centre for Orchestral Studies, Goldsmith’s College, London - his main teachers were Bengt Eklund (Gothenburg) and John Wallace (London).
Alongside his work as a member of Chaconne Brass and the Headspace Ensemble, Torbjorn Hultmark has worked with orchestras and ensembles such as the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, BBC Philharmonic, Philharmonia Orchestra, London Sinfonietta and the London Mozart Players as well as film and TV session work. Torbjorn has worked as a soloist with the Northern Sinfonia, Bournemouth Sinfonietta, Sinfonia 21 and the Southern Sinfonia.
Torbjorn’s music has been performed extensively and it has been recorded on CD (CBCD597 and CBCD 1101) as well as broadcast in Britain (BBC Radio 3 and Classic FM) and Scandinavia. His output is wide-ranging and includes works for large orchestra and choral music as well as scores for different types of chamber ensembles.
Since 2002,Torbjorn runs a recording business, Tootproductions.
Melinda Maxwell
Melinda Maxwell BA, ARCM, LTCL, HonARAM was born in London and read music at York University.
Since her studies in Germany with Ingo Goritzki and Helmut Winschermann she has performed as soloist at the Edinburgh, Aldeburgh, Aarhus (Denmark), Huddersfield and Warwick Festivals as well as on tours in Europe, Japan and Mexico. She has given many recitals and is frequently heard on BBC Radio 3.
Over the years a number of works have been written especially for Melinda. These include compositions by Simon Bainbridge Music for Mel and Nora, Sir Harrison Birtwistle Pulse Sampler and 26 Orpheus Elegies, Howard Skempton Three Pieces, Jo Kondo Dartington Air, Anthony Gilbert Os, Robert Saxton “…from a distant shore”. In London in 1988 she premiered Nicholas Maw’s Little Concert for oboe and chamber orchestra, which bears the dedication “...written as a tribute to the playing of Melinda Maxwell”. In summer 1994 she gave the first performance of Banshee in the House for oboe and percussion, written for her by Simon Holt, as part of a BBC lunchtime recital at St John’s Smith Square London. In the 1998 Cheltenham Festival she premiered a new work for oboe and ensemble by Philip Cashian with the Endymion Ensemble. Another new work by Simon Holt, Sphinx for Cor Anglais and tuned gongs, was written for and premiered by Melinda in the 2001 Cheltenham festival.
In addition to her work as a chamber musician and recitalist, she is principal oboe of Endymion and also performs regularly with the London Sinfonietta, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, the Hilliard Ensemble and the London Metropolitan Orchestra. She is also in demand in the world of commercial music, her playing being most familiar in the Inspector Morse series for BBC TV. She has taught at the Royal Academy of Music and Trinity College London and has been giving master-classes at the Dartington International Summer School since 1992. She also coaches at the Britten-Pears and NYO summer courses. Since September 2001 she was appointed Director of Woodwind Studies at the Royal Northern College of Music.
Her compositions include Pibroch for solo oboe (BBC Recording and Lontano Records), Transformations, a song for soprano and chamber ensemble commissioned by the Composer’s Ensemble (London premiere 1990), and Endless Chain for oboe, saxophone and percussion (BBC Recording 1992). She premiered her Elegy for oboe and piano in June 1994 for BBC Radio 3 and completed Pelagos, a string trio, for the Chamber Players of London, which was performed in Bromsgrove in November 1995 and in 1997 at the Purcell Room by the Endymion Ensemble. In 1998 a string sextet, From Tree to Tree was performed at the Old Isleworth Festival and a duet for clarinet and harp, Song Lines and Cadences was performed at St Giles Cripplegate in London. Song for Sidney for solo oboe was premiered at St John’s Smith Square as part of a memorial concert for Sidney Sutcliffe.
In 1997 NMC Recordings released a CD in their Artists Series of Melinda playing Birtwistle’s Pulse Sampler and Simon Holt’s Banshee as well as her own Elegy to great critical acclaim. In 2000 Dutton Laboratories released an Edmund Rubbra CD featuring Melinda playing his Oboe Sonata, and in 2003 a York Bowen CD with her performance of the Oboe Sonata. In 2004 Dutton released a solo CD of works written for and by Melinda.